Tracking the location and activities
of ITD highway maintenance vehicles might get easier thanks to a pilot
project featuring a little gold box.

The
Preco PreCise System combines global positioning satellite (GPS) technology
with Wi-Fi and cellular communication capability in a small gold box
that can be mounted in all ITD highway maintenance vehicles, according
to Steve Spoor, ITD highway equipment superintendent with the Office
of Highway Operations and Safety.

The unit gathers vehicle information
ranging from location (via GPS) to equipment accessory activity such
as sanding or de-icing application. That data is transferred by cellular
or Wi-Fi technologies to a secure Web site where registered users can
retrieve the information in the form of easy-to-use reports.

“In any 15-minute time frame we
can tell where a specific truck was or has been.” Spoor said.
“We can call up hard data or maps.”

ITD,
in cooperation with Boise-based Preco, installed the units in four of
District 3’s highway maintenance trucks last winter as part of
a pilot project planned initially to assess the technology’s value
as a tort liability tool.

“We could go back and see precisely
where a specific vehicle had been, when, and how much sand or de-icer
was put down at a given time,” Spoor said. “After we started
looking at the data we could also see the unit’s value with helping
manage those materials.”

The department is using the system at
no cost, but even carrying an estimated price tag of around $200 per
truck, per year, Spoor said he believed the system could pay for itself
in two or three years.

“We want to take the time to develop
a good business case for using the system statewide,” he said.

He added that adopting the system also
might allow ITD to provide a better level of service to the public.